IF AMERICA HAD ONLY ONE MIXED RACE

John Powers and Mary Smith vs. director, United States Agency for Mandatory Miscegenation

June 21, 2101

Chief Justice Harper delivered the opinion of the court:

Petitioners John Powers and Mary Smith seek to enjoin the enforcement of the Mandatory Miscegenation Act of 2100 on the ground that it violates the U.S. Constitution. The Act provides that: "No person who is not genetically certified as a person of mixed race may procreate with another person of the same race." Mr. Powers and Ms. Smith have both been genetically certified as members of the white race. They wish to have a child. They may not do so without violating the Act and thereby risking serious penalty.

The Mandatory Miscegenation Act was enacted by Congress after several years of public debate. It was hailed by President Muhammad as "the most important, the most fundamental civil rights legislation in the history of our nation."

When the Act was first introduced in Congress, its drafters explained the Act as follows: "After centuries of racial strife and division, after endless failed efforts to eliminate racism from our hearts, our minds and our social policies, it is time to bring us all together and to end race once and for all as a divisive social construct.

If all Americans have only one race--the mixed race that is the one true melting pot of America--then and only then will we finally be `one nation, indivisible.' "

Petitioners argue that the Act violates the constitutional right of privacy. This court first fully embraced the constitutional right of privacy in Eisenstadt vs. Baird (1972), which announced that the right of privacy includes the right of an individual "to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."

The following year, in Roe vs. Wade (1973), the court held that the right of privacy is "broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." And in Falwell vs. Mississippi (2006), we held that the right of privacy guarantees the right of homosexual couples to employ artificial means of reproduction to have children of their own.

Although we have given broad scope to the right of reproductive privacy, we have also recognized that the right is not unlimited. In Middleton vs. United States (2038), for example, we upheld the federal Natural Reproduction Act, which banned human cloning. As the court explained in Middleton, although the constitutional right of reproductive autonomy is well-established in our decisions, it is equally well-established that the government "may limit that right in order to promote a compelling societal or governmental interest." In Middleton, the court held that the government has a "compelling interest in preventing future abuses and tragedies arising out of human cloning like those that have become so familiar over the last 25 years."

The case before us today poses a particularly vexing challenge. It puts into direct and irreconcilable conflict the cherished right of the individual "to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child" and the nation's profound interest in finally achieving racial peace and harmony. As President Muhammad noted when he signed the Mandatory Miscegenation Act, our nation has a long and troubled history of racism and racial strife. Slavery led to the Civil War which led to Jim Crow which led to segregation which led to economic and educational deprivation and urban isolation.

We remain a nation bitterly divided along racial lines. Blacks vote for blacks; whites vote for whites. Blacks live with blacks; whites live with whites.

There are once again universities for blacks, and universities for whites, although we proudly proclaim that this is "voluntary." Whatever progress we make quickly turns back on itself. The Great Society works, then it doesn't.

Affirmative action works, then it doesn't. Redistribution works, then it doesn't. It is as if racism has been bred into our souls, if not our genes.

Congress has determined to put an end to this endless cycle of racism in the most direct and most effective way possible: by creating a nation of one race--not a race of whites, or blacks, or Asians, but a single, mixed race of "Americans."

In one or two or at most three generations, we can and will do what we have failed to do in almost 500 years--achieve the truly "color-blind" society. If ever there was a compelling governmental and societal interest, it is in the elimination of racism in our nation, once and for all.

Although we feel for petitioners, who unquestionably love one another and wish nothing more than to bear a child together, the interest of the nation is paramount.

It is through such sacrifices, not small, but essential, that we will finally attain a society in which all people are in fact as well as in declaration "created equal." At the dawn of a new century, this is the right promise for the future.

We find that the Mandatory Miscegenation Act of 2100 is consistent with the United States Constitution and therefore affirm the decision below.

Right result?

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This is the first of two dozen University of Chicago faculty-written essays about the future that will appear on the university's Millennium Project home page. The project, which starts Tuesday, was designed for faculty members to speculate on changes that may take place in their fields of expertise over the next century. Readers will be able to indicate their agreement or disagreement with each article and see the results of previous voting. The address for the Web page is: http://www.uchicago.edu/